There are fears that the long awaited Employment Bill may not materialise in 2022 and may have been shelved altogether, following reports that it will not appear in the Queens Speech.
Employment Bill
A new Employment Bill has been anticipated for the last 3 years since been included in the 2019 Queens Speech. It was widely expected that it would materialise in 2021, but ultimately it was not included in the 2021 Queens Speech. At the time, the BBC reported that: “Downing Street said an Employment Bill would be introduced “when the time is right”, citing the pandemic as the reason for the delay.”
Given that the Employment Bill did not appear last year, it was widely anticipated that the legislation would form part of the 2022 Queens Speech. However, according to the Financial Times, that may not now happen, with a spokesperson for the Government stating: "No. Not everything we want to do can we find space for in one season, we can’t do everything we want to do immediately."
The spokesperson added: "We are committed to building a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy that delivers on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work. This includes ensuring workers’ rights are robustly protected while also fostering a dynamic and flexible labour market."
However, according to the Financial Times, "three people familiar with the thinking within the Cabinet Office said that officials were not progressing work on the bill, making its inclusion in the Queen’s Speech this year unlikely at best. Downing Street is understood to have overruled the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which had been pushing the legislation."
Commenting upon the development, the General Secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady stated: "Make no mistake - this would be a betrayal of working people. What happened at P&O should have marked a turning point for workers’ rights. But by abandoning the employment bill, the government is sending a message that it is happy for rogue employers to treat staff like dirt. Enough is enough. We need action now to boost worker protections and stop exploitation like fire and rehire and zero-hours contracts. Tinkering around the edges with feeble statutory codes won’t have bad bosses quaking in their boots."
The Delayed Legislation
If and when it appears, the Employment Bill was expected to include the following:-
- The establishment of a new single enforcement body for employment rights. The Government published its response to the consultation on this issue on the 8th June 2021.
- The extension of protection against redundancy re pregnancy, maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave, with similar protection afforded to those returning to work from adoption leave and shared parental leave
- Neonatal leave and pay
- A new right to 1 week’s unpaid leave per year for carers
- New legislation to ensure that tips left by customers in restaurants are retained by staff in full
- A new right for workers to request a more stable contract after 26 weeks service
- New legislation to enhance flexible working rights
- An extension of time required to break a period of continuous service from one week to four weeks
- New legislation making it compulsory for organisations to publish their modern slavery statements on a new government-run registry
- New legislation relating to post-termination non-compete clauses, over which the Government is currently consulting on
- An extension of the ban on exclusivity clauses beyond zero hours contracts, to contracts where the workers’ guaranteed weekly income is less than the Lower Earnings Limit, which the Goivernment is also currently consulting on
- Compensation for those whose shifts are cancelled at short notice, an entitlement to reasonable notice of allocated shifts, and protections for those who refuse last minute shifts
- New legislation to protect against “firing and rehiring”
The Future For The Employment Bill
It is unclear as to whether the Employment Bill has now been permanently shelved. If that is the case, then given that the Government has made firm commitments to proceed with at least some of the proposals, such as 1 week’s unpaid leave per year for carers, then it is likely that separate legislation will be introduced to bring in those elements that the Government does wish to progress
